Our
Work

Etowah Bush School operated temporary museum in the historic colored waiting room of the Cartersville Train Depot at 1 Friendship Plaza in downtown Cartersville, Georgia.

 

The Cartersville Train Depot was built in 1854, under the direction of the Western & Atlantic Railroad, to provide passenger train service between Atlanta, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

 

From 1854 to the late 1950s, the Cartersville Train Depot would bear witness to enslaved labor, Civil War battle, chain gang and convict labor, as well as the Black Migration to and from the South.

African American Business Owners in the Cartersville Downtown District, 1870-1940

 

Towards Freedom focuses on the first African American business owners in the downtown district of Cartersville, Georgia, from 1870-1940. The images included in this exhibit provide a view into Black life following the end of the Civil War. 

 

After Emancipation, African Americans entered society with new freedoms. Some set out in search of family members that had been separated in slavery. Some migrated north or west in search of better opportunities. Some continued to work the land. Others became entrepreneurs by creating a profit from the skills they once used while they were enslaved. Towards Freedom allows us to explore economic development in the Black community, as well as the community relationships that grew from and supported this development.

 

We hope that Towards Freedom prompts deeper conversations, questions, and understandings of the complex nature and legacy of slavery, Emancipation, and Reconstruction. 

Towards Freedom was on display at the Cartersville Train Depot until June 2021.

Participants were guided through the two historically segregated sections of Oak Hill Cemetery while hearing stories of local interred residents, unique tombstones, African and African American funerary traditions.The tour will last approximately 45 minutes-1 hour. This is not a ghost tour.

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An Evening at Oak Hill was a collaborative project with the Bartow History Museum and sponsored by Parnick Jennings Funeral Home & Cremation Services.

The Bench by the Road Project is a memorial history and community outreach initiative of the Toni Morrison Society. The Project was launched on February 18, 2006, on the occasion of Toni Morrison's 75th Birthday. The name "Bench by the Road" is taken from Morrison's remarks in a 1989 interview with World Magazine where she spoke of the absences of historical markers that help remember the lives of Africans who were enslaved and of how her fifth novel, Beloved, served this symbolic role:

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"There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves . . . There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath, or wall, or park, or skyscraper lobby. There's no 300-foot tower, there's no small bench by the road. There is not even a tree scored, an initial that I can visit or you can visit in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence or better still on the banks of the Mississippi. And because such a place doesn't exist . . . the book had to" (The World, 1989).

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Since 2006, the Toni Morrison Society has placed 25 Benches at sites, including Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina; Walden Woods in Lincoln, Massachusetts; The 20th Arrondissement in Paris, France; Fort-de-France, Martinique; and, most recently, the Schomburg Center in Harlem, New York.

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Cartersville, Georgia (Cartersville Train Depot) is the site of the 26th Bench